Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> it's still really hard to beat working from home

Citation needed.

Personally, working from home is an absolute nightmare for me. There is an endless list of chores and things to do around the house that are a constant distraction and mind-space consumer, it is hard to disconnect at the end of the day, I am continually continually interrupted by family members (...and if I am not I am worrying if the kids are ok since why cant I hear them? Are they ok? Are they laying on the floor unconscious? etc etc), cleaners, the post man, the amazon delivery guy/gal, the list is endless. I have to keep half a brain "on-call" to listen out for and react to these interruptions.

This is even with a good sized dedicated office room. I did not even have that during covid and my entire family was in one room at a time.

At the office I can concentrate and get work done, since it is a workplace and there are no non-work distractions. Any interruptions at work are for work, so it is my job to handle them on work time.

When you are at the office, who watches your kids?

I had a few coworkers that skipped out on daycare when they worked from home. Then they complained about being interrupted all the time by their kids. IMO, there is nothing wrong with putting the kids in daycare while you are working at home.

For me, my wife and childcare look after the kids, but you cant just block-out the shouts and noise and screaming and crying.

So e.g. blood-curdling scream from your kid and then silence. Or lots of laughing and running about and then a huge crash and bang followed by silence as something is clearly falling over.

What do you do? Just shrug and ignore it because there is someone else down there? Of course you cant. 99.9% of the time its all fine, but you can't just turn off that sensation of needing to keep half-a-brain listening for something major happening. The divided attention is a killer for productivity.

Out-of-sight-out-of-mind at the office is an absolute godsend. Day care is very, very expensive in the UK (especially if you earn over £100K) so financially it is often not viable to send them to daycare for 5 full days a week (this will often cost £2-3,000 a month in London, often more than a mortgage or rental costs)[1]

1 - personal experience, the only data I could find is UK average of £15K a year (https://www.daynurseries.co.uk/advice/childcare-costs-how-mu...) but that is UK average, not London. For comparison the UK average house price is £285K, but in London it is £742k. I suspect the average figures include a lot of people who earn under 100K and so get some aspect of free care - any tech worker will be earning more than this so gets zero help.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com